The commune ran into political troubles while attempting to get the town of Estero incorporated, and Koresh's health began to decline after he was involved in a street fight with a local politician. Two years later, after he was forced by declining health into retirement, Koresh's novel, The Great Red Dragon, was published. It was a thinly disguised retelling of his own plans for his life.

After Koresh's death and failure to return from the dead, the cult slowly declined. During the Great Depression, most of the land was sold, and in 1962 the few surviving members deeded the remaining land to the state of Florida. It became the Koreshan State Historic Site, and the remaining Koreshans worked there as tour guides until the last died in 1982. The park still celebrates the Lunar Festival Holiday on April 8, and the buildings of the commune can be toured.

And just so you don't think this was an isolated belief, early in this century a German named Peter Bender began spreading similar ideas under the name "Hohlwelthehre" - Hollow Earth Theory. It's unclear whether he came up with the idea independently; however, by the mid-thirties, Koreshanity had heavily influenced him through some of Koresh's writings that had made it to Europe. Bender eventually died in a Naziconcentration camp, but the idea had been well enough disseminated that in 1942 the Nazi leadership sent a scientific expedition under Dr. Heinz Fisher to the Baltic Sea. Part of their purpose was to use newly developed infrared sensors to spy on the Britishfleet-- by looking up across the hollow earth. Dr. Fisher was later recorded as saying, "The Nazis forced me to do crazy things." There was even an Indiana Jones book very loosely based on his expedition.